


Curtains

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)
Genre: (Referenced) - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Feelings, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Non-Consensual Touching, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post Traumatic Stress, Spooning, THERE WAS ONLY ONE BED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:56:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27301552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Wanted to take a more serious take on the immediate aftermath. Look, I know in the 80s, sexual assault was basically a romcom meet cute and woman-on-man was especially never fodder for actual drama or emotions, but Gil's got to have some trauma here, and for that matter, Jack legitimately thought Gil was dead for a moment, and also deserves to work through some trauma. So here they are, snuggling, talking about their feelings, and eventually working themselves onto the same page.
Relationships: Jack Harrison/Gil Turner (Transylvania 6-5000)
Kudos: 6
Collections: Jeff Goldblum Cinematic Universe (JGCU)





	1. Moving Rooms

**Author's Note:**

> Oops I thought this was a one shot and it is going to be two chapters because there is Too Much of it.

“Can I sleep in your room?”

Jack sighs, turning to Gil to tell him no, he’s a grown man, but the sight of him stops him. Standing there in the doorway, hunched in on himself and wringing his hands, and with that look on his face…

“There is not enough room in my bed for the both of us, you know. There’s barely enough room in this bed for one of us.”

“I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“You will not. Gil… so help me, if you tell me your room is ‘spooky’, after everything we’ve been through, I will scream.”

He regrets _that_ immediately. Gil’s expression crumbles, he turns away. He wraps his arms around himself, tight.

“No, it’s not ‘spooky’. Forget it.”

“Hey, hey, no.” He jogs to the door, to catch him before he can go. “I’m sorry, I’m-- We can switch rooms, if you want to.”

“No-- I… that’s fine, I don’t--”

“Gil. Do you want to stay in my room?”

“It’s stupid, it’s fine.”

Jack sighs again, and takes Gil by both shoulders, steering him to the bed and sitting him down. “What’s wrong with your room?”

“Window.”

Jack’s brow furrows. “Okay, well, I don’t mind switching--”

“No, I don’t want you to.”

“Is the window something I can fix?”

Gil shakes his head, and tips forward until he’s leaning into Jack. His shoulders are tense, something in him drawn so taut he’s just barely trembling, and Jack feels adrift. It’s not that Gil isn’t always having some anxious crisis or other, normally Gil’s anxieties are internal and unimportant and easily soothed, normally Jack knows what to do about it, but this… 

There’s nothing spooky in Gil’s room, they’ve settled all that, there’s nothing spooky at all, except for low-level government corruption and an incompetent police force with a chief on the take. Which, to be fair, Jack thinks is a scarier prospect than Frankenstien and Dracula.

“Okay, then we’ll switch rooms.” He thinks he’s being more than reasonable, but Gil grabs at him.

“She came in through the window.” He says at last, his voice steady. “She could still come in through the window.”

“Oh. Look-- it’s-- it’s okay, we’ll switch--”

“She came in through the window and I know she’s a nice lady and she’s sick and she can’t help it, but I don’t have to _like_ it.”

“No, I know. You don’t have to sleep in that room, you’ll stay in mine. It’s okay.”

“It’s _not_ okay. She… It’s _not_ okay.” Gil looks up at him, all wide-eyed and helpless, and it _hurts_ , in a way he’s not used to it hurting.

It hurts, because he’d been strapped to that table, in the lab, and Jack hadn’t known if he was alive or dead, he was so limp and still, and then his eyes had fluttered open and Jack could breathe again, but…

But he wasn’t _helpless_ like this, then. Once he’d known Gil was alive, the relief had been overwhelming, and he’d been ready to take on the world-- or at least a semi-mad scientist-- to get them out of the crazy situation they’d found themselves in, and it was…

It was just different. There had been actions he could take, and now there’s nothing he can do, because the damage is done.

“You stay right here, okay? I’ll go and get your things, and… I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to go back into that room for anything, I’ll get all your stuff.” He promises, and Gil flashes him a grateful look. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks, Jack.” 

He doesn’t like leaving him-- he hadn’t realized how much he wouldn’t like leaving him, until he’s in Gil’s room, thinking about how he’s left Gil alone after everything that’s happened. How terrifying it had been when Gil was carried off, when he didn’t know where to find him, when he did find him and didn’t know if he was still alive… and how terrified must Gil be, to have asked to sleep on the floor of his room just to avoid the window that woman first came in through…

He packs up Gil’s things with a little more care than he normally gives his own, gently smoothing out his folded pajamas before closing his suitcase. He bumps into Radu in the hallway, and that’s when it hits him, the entire hotel is empty save for them. He could just ask to be moved.

“Hey, uh, Radu?”

“Yes?” He says at last, along with a long and agonized noise that Jack takes for an internal argument over whether or not to address him as ‘master’.

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble--”

“Oh, no, I’ll do anything, it’s no trouble at all.” Radu assures him, and makes the same agonized noise. 

“I was just wondering if you could move us to a double room? I don’t want you to think there’s anything _wrong_ with-- I mean, under the circumstances, you know, the rooms have been… nice. It’s, um, it’s just the window. The window in Gil’s room, so-- and again, no complaints against you!-- but he had some trouble with the window, so he’s in my room, but my room’s not really, you know… for two. Obviously, you know, uh…” He digs out a couple of bills. “For your trouble, but if you could find something--”

“Oh, yes, Sir!” He nods, having apparently found, at long last, a comfortable compromise between bowing and scraping or American-style informality. “Please, allow me-- allow me to take that for you, and I will go and put it in another room.”

“Great. Anything without a ground-floor window. Well… I’ll pack my bag, and you can come and let us know when you have a room ready. Thanks, again, so much.”

Radu hurries off with Gil’s luggage, and Jack returns to his room, to throw his things together.

“Jack?” Gil lifts his head from Jack’s pillow. “What’s going on?”

“Shh, it’s fine. Radu’s going to put us in a double room, I asked for something without a ground-floor window, I packed your bag and he’s taking it up--”

“Radu? Not Fejos?”

“Right. You do not have to deal with Fejos, you do not have to carry anything. You do not have to go back to that room, you do not have to sleep alone. Okay? And I-- I’m here now. Okay?”

Gil nods, uncurling from the ball he’s been in just to fit in Jack’s too-small bed. He wordlessly helps to pack Jack’s things, fussing everything Jack throws into the case into its place. He’s visibly relieved when Jack answers the knock at the door to find it’s only Radu and not Fejos-- who seems harmless enough, but then, Gil’s the one he’d set his sights on really pestering, and Gil’s had a hard enough night. 

“Come on, we’ll switch rooms and then we can, uh, we can settle down. Try and have a nice last night in Transylvania, huh?” Jack allows Radu to take his luggage so that he can gently shepherd Gil along, keeping an arm around him as they head up the stairs. Which is easy, he’s never really stopped to think about how easy it normally is to hold onto Gil, even in motion. Maybe not at a full run, sure, but most of the time they have the same gait, and a tendency to fall into each other’s orbit that he’s also never stopped to think about.

“This suite has its own bath, renovated to please the American tourists.” Radu informs them, as he unlocks the door and bears Jack’s luggage in, placing it next to Gil’s. He turns the key over, and seems to agonize another long moment over whether or not to throw in another ‘master’. Force of habit, Jack supposes. Even standing straight, there are things it takes time to unlearn. “I hope you gentlemen sleep well.”

Radu makes himself scarce, and so Jack locks the door and takes stock of the suite’s sitting room. A little sofa before a fireplace, a TV cabinet nearby, a wet bar… not cramped, but cozy-- the thick rug and the heavy drapes give the space that feel, at least, keep it from feeling cold. The creepy and the kooky is largely absent from the decor, setting it apart from the rest of the place. Sure, an oil painting of ol’ Vlad the Impaler is over the mantle, but the telephone is normal. There are two doors, aside from the door into the suite, and Gil tries one of them, revealing the bathroom-- which pleases at least two American tourists. So there’s that.

“Go ahead and get your toothbrush and stuff, and take the bathroom first. I’ll, uh-- it must be two beds in one room, I’ll take the one by the window. Not that-- I mean, not that anyone will come through a window, we’re on, what, the second story, third? But, uh… You know. I’ll just…” He nods.

“Okay, Jack.” Gil says, and goes to his luggage, and retrieves his toiletries and his pajamas before disappearing into the palatial bath. 

Jack opens the door onto the bedroom and stops in his tracks. 

He’d requested a double room, he’d assumed that he was understood. The enormous canopy bed suggests otherwise. 

Okay. Okay. Well, there’s certainly no worrying about whether or not they’ll fit, they could probably fit a whole third person in bed with them, so… so that’s fine. That’s perfectly fine. It’s better than the floor, isn’t it? And if it wasn’t, he could take the couch out in the sitting room, and it probably wouldn’t be much worse than the twin bed he started out in, but they could have an open door between them. 

There’s a little balcony, not much of one. He checks it out just the same, assures himself no one is likely to scale the wall to it-- not that he really worried about that, but now he can say ‘no one could climb the wall to the balcony to get to you’. And the door onto the balcony latches securely, he tests the latch before drawing the curtains shut. He’s an old pro when it comes to dealing with all the stupid little things that come up with anxiety, he doesn’t mind testing latches. 

No, he minds that this time the anxiety _comes_ from somewhere. That someone he cares about can’t sleep alone in a room with a ground-floor window because of something that happened. Not… not the _worst_ thing that could have happened, but something, and now he can’t stop thinking about the worst things that could have happened.

They’d worried about a couple of different worst things that could have happened, he guesses, neither of which he wants to think about now, but he can’t seem to help it, and he finds himself pacing the bedroom, half-dressed, when Gil comes back into the room.

“Bathroom’s all yours.” Gil says, and doesn’t comment on the bed situation at all. 

“I checked the balcony, um, the door-- I mean, it’s latched, so… but even if it wasn’t, I don’t think we’re in any danger in here, so. So you know. Everything’s, uh, secure. You can get comfy.”

“Thanks. I-- I know I’m being ridiculous, just--”

“No, hey…” Jack frowns, moving to rest a hand on Gil’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, that I-- that before, when you tried to tell me… I’m sorry I didn’t take you seriously. I thought you had a bad dream, and… then with everything else, I just… It didn’t occur to me that there was an actual, um… that there was someone who could get to you like that, and then… You’re not being ridiculous. I never should have let that happen to you.”

“Well, it _happened_ , you didn’t _let_ it happen.” He shrugs. “I _feel_ ridiculous.”

“You’re not.”

“Just this once, huh?”

He cups Gil’s cheek, smiling. “Just this once. Just for a while. Is the room okay?”

Gil nods, his hand coming up to hold onto Jack’s arm a moment, warm against his bare skin. It’s the kind of simple touch that must have passed between them a thousand times, more. For some reason, tonight, he notices it. 

“Go on, that’s enough standing around in your jammies, hop in bed.”

“I’m a grown man, I don’t call them ‘jammies’.” Gil rolls his eyes, but he does as he’s told. He always does.

That shouldn’t make Jack as happy as it does… Gil’s easy compliance isn’t something he’s _earned_ \-- far from it. It’s the natural consequence of his upbringing, perhaps, but it’s not ideal. He finds it annoying at best when Gil falls into that obsequious obedience with other people-- his father, or some perceived voice of authority. And yet when he goes along with what Jack tells him to do, it makes him feel…

He tries not to dwell on it.

“When you look like that in them, they’re jammies.” He leaves off his own trip to the bath in order to move to the bed, to adjust Gil’s collar. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means how are these so big on you?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

Jack laughs. “Cute. I’ll be back in a minute.”

He keeps to that implicit promise to keep things quick, though once he’s in the bath, there’s a certain amount of temptation. If it wasn’t so late at night, the enormous bathtub would be calling his name. He’s not sure if they’ll have time to take advantage of it before they have to check out.

_He_. If _he’ll_ have time. Bathing together is not traditionally a thing he and Gil do, and even if it was, this maybe wouldn’t be the time.

And he probably won’t, anyway.

They’d both fit, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a bathtub they’d both fit into before, not comfortably. 

Doesn’t mean they _would_ , of course, because it’s not a thing they do, or a thing he wants to do, and if he was going to enjoy a bath in an enormous tub, it would be alone, but it’s a thing he notices, that the tub is large enough.

Not so large they wouldn’t touch, but large enough they’d fit.

Maybe it’s best if he doesn’t spend too much time contemplating the bathtub. He hurries through his routine and heads back in to check on Gil.

Gil, who’s all settled on his side of the bed, and who pats the empty space to his side invitingly before Jack can even raise the question of whether he should bed down on the couch or what. 

“Jack?” Gil sits up a little on one elbow.

“Yes?”

“Could you… the curtains?”

Jack moves to the balcony door and the curtains there, but they seem fine. When he looks back to Gil, Gil is gesturing to the bedcurtains. 

“You want these drawn? You’re not going to be scared of the dark on me, are you?”

“I’m not scared of the _dark_. I’m not _scared_ , even, is-- I’m reasonably anxious about, about tripping on something I can’t see, or being stalked by something, or… spiders. But I do in fact sleep in a dark room every night. Besides… how often are we going to get the opportunity? My bed doesn’t have curtains. Does your bed have curtains?”

Cheap apartment in New York City dark isn’t the same as castle in Transylvania dark, but Jack doesn’t say as much. He just undoes the curtain ties and starts getting the curtains pulled in tight around the bed, at the foot and on Gil’s side. 

“Not only does my bed not have curtains, I just have a blanket thrown over the curtain rod in my window.” He says, turning out the light and slipping in on his side before drawing the curtains the rest of the way shut behind him. He’s still wearing his bathrobe, but it seems like he ought to, since the alternative is sleeping in his underwear.

“Well, now I know what I’m getting you for your birthday.”

“Don’t get me curtains for my birthday.”

“You should own curtains, Jack.”

“The blanket adds insulation, I don’t need curtains.”

“You lecture me about living like an adult and you don’t own curtains. What’s your decor like?”

“I hate to break it to you--”

“When you take women home, to your undecorated apartment, you don’t think they notice you don’t have curtains?”

“When I take women home to my apartment, I think they’re busy noticing other things.” He lies.

“Well you might convince one to make it a regular thing, if you had curtains. You can’t impress a single mother without curtains.”

“I don’t _want_ to make it a regular thing, who said I wanted a regular thing?” Jack grumbles and rolls onto his side, his back to his surprise bedmate. “You look like you should be holding a teddy bear in those jammies.”

“You can’t see me, it’s dark.” 

“I know what you look like.”

“Well I don’t have a teddy bear.”

There’s a pout lurking there, which wasn’t his intent-- he’d just wanted to move the conversation off of his love life and whether or not he took women home to his apartment and whether or not they were impressed. He’d just wanted to not think about why he _doesn’t_ take women home-- he takes women out, and sometimes he kisses them, and he’s never not liked doing so, but he’s also never wanted more. And okay, maybe he’s at an age where a mattress on the floor and an old quilt over the curtain rod is no longer ‘bachelor living’ and more a sign of some kind of depression or arrested development or slavish devotion to work and a lack of concern about one’s living environs, or something. He doesn’t want to talk about that, or think about that. But he hadn’t meant to sting-- not tonight.

“C’mere.” He relents.

“What?”

“Come-- come here. Look, I’m not asking twice.” Or, perhaps he should say he’s not asking three times? “You can hold me.”

“... You mean it?”

“I said I wasn’t asking twice.”

“You’re not making fun of me?”

“I am not making fun of you. I don’t wanna be your tiger, ‘cause tigers play too rough, I don’t wanna be your lion…”

He trails off there, but it’s enough. It’s enough, somehow, to convince Gil of his sincerity. There’s a moment, a tremulous strange moment where he doesn’t breathe for waiting, and then Gil shifts behind him, and scoots closer, and an arm slides around him. He can feel Gil’s breath stirring his hair, warm and gentle, and he takes Gil’s hand, readjusts his hold and laces their fingers together. 

It’s more intimacy than he’s ever had with someone in his _life_.

“I’m an adult, you know. _I_ have curtains.”

“I know you have curtains. I’ve seen your curtains.”

They were some kind of memphis design group pattern, colorful confetti that reminded him of sweaters Gil owned. His apartment is the grown-up version of ‘bachelor’-- some things are mismatched or clearly handed down to him by his parents, his kitchen is home to a coffee pot, a toaster, a set of Garfield mugs, and not much else… but there’s still some thought to things, furniture arranged for maximum ease and comfort rather than out of a desperate attempt to cram everything in _somewhere_. The art prints, in actual frames-- Jack only really remembers the one hanging over the couch, where they sometimes spent late nights working, though he’s sure there were others, similar. All modern and simple and graphic. The one he remembers had been, on top of that, very weird and Catholic, a near-featureless figure, crucified, surrounded by barking dogs, similarly featureless.

“I’m just saying.” Gil says, and then he snuggles closer, his whole body warm. “I never would have guessed you were the little spoon.”

“I’m not. I mean, I-- _now_ , sure, yes. I thought this was what you needed. I mean-- you were the one who… your day was, uh, rough.”

“It’s nice.”

“Okay. Okay. Good.” Jack takes a deep breath. “Look, I, uh… Maybe it’s also easier, like this, to tell you… there’s a lot I’m bad at. Sometimes I know when I’m wrong and I don’t apologize, and I know I should. And I don’t want… Not this time. And I know you don’t, that it’s not-- I know you don’t go around crying wolf on purpose, you get anxious, and I… I could _listen_ to you once in a while. I could listen to you. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you this time. I didn’t take it seriously the first time, the first two times, about-- about what was happening, with you, with… But believe me, I would never-- I do take what happened to you seriously, now I know. I do. And I’m not trying to make fun of you or treat you like you’re a child, but I-- I want to do something, that’s all. I want to do something.”

“You’ve done something.”

“I mean I want to take care of you. I mean you-- you came to me and you asked me for something, you know, you opened yourself up and risked me not taking it seriously again, because you didn’t want to be alone tonight, and I should do right by that.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how much more right you can _do_. You got us changed to another room, off the ground floor, you’re sharing a bed with me for pete’s sake, it’s… I appreciate that. Honest.”

“I thought you were dead.” He doesn’t mean to blurt it out, but he does.

“Jack…”

“I saw you on that table and I thought-- you were so damn _still_ , you were so _fucking_ _still_. And pale!”

“I’m always pale. Kids used to call me the incredible albino boy.”

“Not like this. You were-- I know what you look like, this was different, you were white as a sheet and I-- And the last time we spoke I-- _fuck_ \-- I was so awful to you and then you were lying there, I thought, dead, and I just-- and the last time I saw you, you were there for me but I wasn’t-- but I call you names and I mess you around and I don’t take it _seriously_ when you… I mean I didn’t know, I didn’t know she was real, I didn’t know she… You were scared and you turned to me and I was an _ass_. And I called you stupid and I called you crazy, and you, uh… when I needed you, you were _there_ , and I never got to say-- and then you weren’t moving and I was, I was just trying to find your pulse, didn’t know if you were breathing, and… and I thought, I’ll never tell him I’m sorry. I’ll never tell him he-- what he-- that he’s-- I thought I’d never tell you, that you are… you are so damn important to me. And I should have treated you a little better. A lot better. I thought I’d never get to tell you. But I’m just-- But you came to my room afraid to be alone tonight and I almost did it again, I thought I lost you just hours ago but I still almost did it again, and I… I just… I just…”

“Oh…”

“And I can’t-- you know? You look at me the way you do sometimes, and I don’t know how to do this right. It’s like you-- like you need something, or you deserve something, that I don’t know how to be. And sometimes I think it’s okay, because neither does anyone else, so… so you’ll keep letting me screw things up, and it’s not, it’s not great, but it’s what we’ve got. And I think maybe… you know, it’s-- and it’s not like I’m a guy who, who doesn’t like to meet new people! But at the end of the day, I’m with you and we’ve just got each other, really, and I never know how to tell you that it matters to me, that I’ve got you. That you matter to me. More than other people, I mean. That you’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and I mean I like people, I think I get along with people, but I don’t _need_ other people, and seeing you, not knowing if you were-- I just… I need you. I need you. And I like you. And I don’t say this shit enough, I don’t say any of the things I wish I’d said before I thought you-- before I thought I--”

“I’m not dead.”

“Yeah.” He swallows, feels like he can’t breathe and can’t force down the lump in his throat that’s keeping him from breathing, the warning tightness in his chest and the sting behind his eyes, and he’s a grown man, so why is he breaking down like this now, when nothing happened? “Yeah, I got that.”

“Not even hurt.”

“I know. Believe me, if I-- I know.”

If he could bottle the feeling of relief he’d felt seeing those blue eyes flutter open and zero in on his own, he could put the friendly neighborhood heroin dealer out of work. 

“Do you want to be the big spoon?”

“We’re not _spooning_ , that’s not what this is.”

“ _Jack_.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He takes a shaky breath, and tamps down on the urge to flee. Get up, run a bath, and just not think about these feelings, ever. Sleep on the couch and wake up with a crick in his neck and never say the things he thinks he’s past due on saying. “I think if I hold you now, I might never let go.”

“Okay.”

He says it like it’s so simple, but he can’t know. He can’t know, when Jack’s never even let himself… 

But he knows, doesn’t he? Deep down, he’s known a long time. It’s why he never goes very far, with any of the women he goes after. It’s why when he does go after them, they’re always blonde, preferably with hair that falls just so across the forehead, wide eyes that don’t need to be blue as long as they’re big and expressive, though he has a weakness for blue, _sweet_ in a certain way but never overly _impressed_ by him-- women who can see through him a little bit but never deep enough to see the real, honest truth of him. Women who won’t last long enough to threaten the stability of the life he leads, and who sometimes ask him if he’s sure this is what he wants, before the flirtations inevitably fizzle out. 

Women he can go out with, and kiss in public, and he can tell himself they don’t feel and smell and sound all wrong, but he knows. He knows every time he finds himself wishing he was holding someone his own height, he knows every time he finds a hand in his that’s too small.

But Gil unwinds from around him and rolls over and so Jack rolls over with him, and slides an arm around his waist, and tries not to fall apart over how right it all feels. 

“Good?” Gil asks him.

“I mean-- I mean, yeah, if this is what-- If you’re comfortable.” 

Gil’s arm rests over his own, Gil’s fingertips delicately trace over the back of his hand. “Yeah. I’m comfortable. Jack… thanks.”

“Any time. Any time.”

“Oh, this is easier…”

“Hm?”

“Talking-- even thinking about things, really. Being held and… and thinking about things. And telling you what I’m thinking.”

“You always tell me what you think.” Jack smiles, his nose buried in Gil’s hair, soft and clean-smelling. “I hate to say it, but it’s probably one of your many good qualities.”

“Yeah, but not this. I mean…” Gil takes a sharp, sudden breath, Jack can feel the way his ribcage expands with it. He holds Jack’s hand, hard. “There’s a lot of things I’ve worried could happen to me. Coming here, or just in general. You know, I get-- I’m a worrier. I go over worst case scenarios and maybe I wasn’t exactly expecting the chief of police to threaten my life when we started this thing, but you know, I expected danger. But I never thought… I never-- I never saw myself… I never saw myself getting molested.”

Jack fights the impulse to argue with him, to say that can’t be the right word for any of what happened. _Molested_ sounds serious, traumatic. _Molested_ happens to young women with creepy college professors and bosses, _molested_ happens to kids. _Molested_ happens to vulnerable people, young or weak or in a position of serious disadvantage, people don’t molest grown men who stand at six foot four.

Unless that grown man is a little bit delicate and a lot bit naive, and so soft and so lovely and so easily led, and he finds himself holding Gil tighter than ever, just trying not to shake as the word settles over him and he has to face what it means, what it means that a strange woman came in through Gil’s window and tried to kiss him, or did kiss him, that she did whatever it was she did, and Gil had been so compassionate and so kind, when the truth came out, and so Jack had thought that was it, bygones, everything settled… He’d seen Gil dancing with her and he’d thought, with everything cleared up and no cause for fear, that it was fine. Hell, maybe Gil had thought so, too, only for it to all hit him later, it’s been a rollercoaster of a night. 

“Hey… hey, you-- you’re safe right now, okay?” He forces himself to be steady, to breathe and to sound almost normal. “I’ve got you. You can-- you can…”

Let it out? Relax? He doesn’t even know. But then, he never saw this happening, either.

“She was in my _room_. I just feel… It’s-- it’s weird, it’s… it’s like there’s two people. There’s this girl, Odette, who I feel bad for, who’s just-- who’s sick and lonely and who thinks people won’t like her and… and I like her? Or, I want her to be okay. And there’s this woman, the lady Dracula, who-- who kissed me, and who put her-- she put my face against her-- This woman, who, I was… I was tied up, and she tried to undress me, and I couldn’t move.” Gil’s voice cracks, Jack’s heart with it. “I couldn’t _move_. And she-- and she’s a nice girl underneath it all, and she, she stopped when I told her to, but if she hadn’t, I couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Gil…”

“I’m being stupid--”

“You’re _not_.”

“She stopped when I asked her to, she let me go. I don’t know why I’m so-- why I can’t just…”

“Gil, being afraid because you were tied down and you couldn’t do anything to defend yourself is probably the most reasonable thing you’ve ever done. And I-- I’m sorry, I-- If I could have gotten you freed first, I would have, everything was just-- I thought, you know… I thought you’d be okay, you were alive so all I had to do was get us out of there and you’d be fine.”

“It would be easier if I could just hate her for it. If I didn’t like any of it. I mean, I don’t! I didn’t want… But it wasn’t…” Gil takes another deep breath, it rises and falls beneath the Jack’s hand, and he begins to rub absentminded circles over him, as if he could soothe straight down to the lungs. “It wasn’t so awful to be kissed, not at first. I mean, I’m not the kind of guy who-- who normally lets strangers-- But I’m not the kind of guy who normally _has_ strangers--! You know! I… she scared me, but it was flattering, too, and-- I mean, you saw her!”

“I did.” Jack nods. “You know, Gil, it’s okay if you were a little attracted to her, too. That doesn’t mean anything about you, or what happened. It doesn’t make it okay or your fault, just because you don’t think she’s all bad.”

“I wasn’t.” He snorts, as if the idea of his being attracted to a stunning and minimally dressed woman was ludicrous. “She’s just… I mean, you saw how, uh--”

“How she was dressed?”

“Her shoes.”

“ _That’s_ what you’re into?”

“What? No!” Gil pushes himself up on one elbow and looks over his shoulder at Jack, not that either of them can see much of the other in the dark. Still, Jack can picture the indignant look on his face. “I just mean she was as tall as I am in them! Don’t be disgusting, I don’t--”

“I didn’t say anything about disgusting!”

Gil settles back down, huffy, and readjusts Jack’s arm around him. “There was a moment where it was okay, that’s all. Where I could close my eyes and just not do anything and not think anything, and… and maybe what was happening to me wasn’t real, maybe I was dreaming it and maybe if I opened my eyes, it wouldn’t be a stranger at all, or-- or maybe it-- maybe it just wouldn’t be real, so it was okay. But she-- but it--”

“Hey, hey… it’s okay. It’s okay. She’s not here, I’m here. I’ve got you.”

“But it was real and she’s real, and she’s not… and she started _chewing_ on me, and I just wanted to get out from under her, she got up on top of me, Jack. And I felt… dirty. And I still do. And I don’t know when it stops.”

“Okay, I’m not going to let that happen again. Hey… we’re gonna go home. We’re gonna go home, you’ll never see her again, and-- and if anyone else _ever_ … if anyone else _ever_ tries to-- Gil, I promise, okay? I promise if you come to me, I will take you seriously, I will take care of you. Okay? I’m not going to let anybody touch you. You just stick with me. No one’s gonna hurt you.”

Gil has his hand, is holding it tight, tucked up beneath his chin, a position that allows Jack to stroke his thumb gently against the dip of Gil’s collarbone, there in the vee of his pajama top. The gentle heat of him...

“You don’t have to play my protector.”

“Not playing.” Jack says the words into his shoulder. “And I have to. Gil, maybe you don’t need me, I’m happy if you don’t, for this. I hope nothing like this ever happens again. But I have to protect you. I have to, because I could have lost my best friend tonight, and I told you I hated your guts and you, I thought you died. Saving me from a-- from a fucking wolfman.”

“I know you don’t hate me.” Gil’s laugh is soft, barely there but still somehow another small relief. “I always knew that.”

“I owe you this. I owe you this. Let me look out for you.”

“Okay, Jack.” And he sighs, and his grip on Jack relaxes, and all of him relaxes… he’s lying there in Jack’s arms, at perfect ease with Jack’s hand resting against his throat.

Not holding on, even in jest, like before, only resting there, because he’s still tucked under Gil’s chin. And Gil’s skin is soft, warm. Jack finds his pulse and tries to relax with him.

He’s a bad friend. Not for what he’d said when he was irritated, not for any horseplay where Gil’s well-being was at the forefront of his mind all the while, not for brushing off his fears or finding a little too much amusement in his tendency towards finding himself in a predicament… well, not only for that.

Because Gil trusts him, and Gil told him all that, about Odette and about being afraid and about feeling… violated. And all Jack wants to do is to kiss him. 

No. Not all.

He wants to gently roll him onto his back, and lie on top of him, and kiss him… he wants the naivete and confusion at the first kiss, and he wants to feel it give way, he wants to be kissed back, he wants to be wanted-- needed-- and he wants Gil to want to be kissed, he doesn’t want him to struggle, to complain, to cry, he wants… just a moment of uncertainty, so that he can be certain, because he doesn’t feel certain and he never has, not about something so real, but he could be certain if Gil needed him to be. Isn’t that always how they work? He knows exactly what to do when Gil needs him to know, when Gil’s not sure and he turns to Jack, and sometimes he doesn’t say a word, just looks to him and waits for a word or a nod, and then he’ll relax. Jack wants kissing Gil to be like that, wants to feel him relax, wants to be the reason he decides he’s certain. He wants to kiss him and feel him go to pieces, he wants to kiss him and hear the breathy little wordless sounds that beg another, another, another… 

And he wants to touch him. 

God, does he want to touch him. 

He wants to linger over every button undressing him, he wants to carry him into the enormous bath they’ve been granted access to, to a tub of hot water and bubbles, and he wants to wash away the memory of anyone else’s touch, and he wants…

He wants so much it scares him. Not that he would ever dare _take_ , not that he could ever act on the deep desires he can’t keep denying-- not to himself, at least, not anymore. Not that he would ever betray the sacred trust Gil has placed in him, because there's being a bad friend, and there’s being a fucking monster. It’s enough to know he wants, when Gil’s vulnerable, when Gil has no idea. When Gil’s been hurt already by someone wanting him too much.

Gil sighs, and Jack shifts his arm, brings his hand down from where it rests against his throat, his chin. When he moves, Gil’s hand finds his again, laces their fingers together, his arm resting atop Jack’s where it’s slung over his waist.

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“This is nice.”

“... Yeah.” He swallows. 

“I wish--”

“Gil?”

“I just wish I-- Nothing. Forget it.”

“Cozy?”

“Yeah, I’m cozy. Jack? You-- you’re just really nice, that’s all.”

They’ve slept together before, though never on purpose-- fallen asleep on each other’s shoulders on Gil’s couch before when working to a deadline, test pattern on the TV and takeout containers beside the typewriter on the coffee table. Even in a motel bed together, not because it was the only one but because they had the travel typewriter, were shoulder to shoulder to file a story from the road. If exhaustion takes them while they’re working, it happens, it’s never been awkward. If Jack wakes up with Gil sprawled against him and no real memory of falling asleep, he’ll pull a blanket over him and that’s that. Holding him, that’s new. Being told it’s nice, or he’s nice, holding Gil?

“Get some sleep.” His thumb moves in gentle circles, soothing himself as much as Gil, soaking up the warmth of him through the soft cotton of his pajamas. He lets himself drift off, lets the evening out of Gil’s breathing lull him down, too. 

He’s on the cusp of sleep, when Gil’s sleepy murmur breaks the silence and pulls him back to consciousness. 

“Jack?”

“Get some _sleep_ , Gil.”

“Okay, but you’re-- Okay.”

“I’m what?”

“Nothing. You can keep doing it, I mean. Um… rubbing my stomach.”

He stops, hadn’t noticed when it had gone from the slight motion of one thumb to his whole hand. “Sorry.”

“No, don’t be-- I mean-- Sorry, I’m going to sleep. Um, Jack?”

“Gil, you’re not going to get any sleep at this rate.”

“I’ll sleep on the train. Or the plane. Both. I’ll sleep! I just wanted to say… I guess I see why they don’t complain you don’t have curtains.”

“Don’t-- don’t say that.” Jack takes his arm back, rolling over onto his back. His stomach feels small, nervous, and he hates himself for it, for letting go, pulling away, but what else could he do? Keep holding him, keep touching him, let the things he says go to his head?

He’s surprised when Gil rolls over after him, when Gil makes himself at home nestled down against Jack’s chest, his cheek against bare skin where Jack’s robe is open enough. 

“Sorry.” He mumbles, sleepy, one leg thrown across Jack’s, one arm snug around his waist. All of him so _warm_ that every place they don’t touch goes cold.

“No-- no, don’t be sorry.” And he’s rubbing Gil’s back now, which is at least a little more normal, but it’s not like he means to start, he just finds that he is. “Don’t be sorry, you’re perfect.”

Gil laughs, so soft Jack feels more than hears it. 

“Goodnight, Jack. Thanks… for being my teddy bear tonight.”

“Shh, go to sleep, honey.” He brings his other hand up, to cup the back of Gil’s head gently, to hold him close. To feel the silk of his hair. “Shh, you’re okay… I’ve got you. You’ve got me. That’s how things should end, huh? You and me…”

“Mm-hm.”

“I do… I do love you, too. More than anything.”

Gil lifts his head, his lips brush Jack’s chin. He can’t tell if it was an accident, even as Gil’s cheek comes to rest against his he can’t be sure. All he can do is hold Gil, and his breath.

“More than anything? Really?”

“Really.”

“I love you.” He sighs, and settles back down. “More than anything.”

“Oh, honey, I know… I’m sorry.”

There’s something of Gil that he has, and can never make up for, all Gil’s sweet, naive loyalty. He knows he doesn’t deserve it. He didn’t before and he doesn’t now, and maybe there are things in life that one cannot earn, and either you get it anyway or you don’t and it’s all just the luck of the draw, it’s all who you wind up knowing and what kind of a person they are, and he was so lucky as to know Gil, who would give him the moon and not think to ask for anything in return. And it isn’t that Jack wouldn’t do the same, he’d give Gil everything, it’s that there are things he wants to give that are rather selfishly the things he wants, not the things Gil does. Gil wants… Jack doesn’t know, exactly, though sometimes he thinks he knows enough. He knows Gil likes to have his worries soothed, likes to be taken care of in little ways, that Gil is… that he’s got a big, soft, gooey heart underneath a gawkish exterior, and he likes to be looked after-- just in little ways. Likes when they pick up food somewhere and Jack orders for him, even if Gil’s the one paying for both of them, likes a hand when he’s carrying too much, likes to be helped out of his coat, likes… just, little things, that show there’s someone who cares about him, who puts him first once in a while. He’s used to not being put first-- he’s used to accepting whatever comes with a scrap of attention. 

The crap he does to try and earn parental approval, the way he lets his peers mess him around just to be a part of something… and how forgiving he is, towards Odette, even as he’d processed the hardest feelings, about what had happened. Someone ought to just _love_ him.

Not the way Jack does. Not bogged down in denial and attempts at distance, not… not tainted by his own desires. Someone ought to love him the way he deserves, openly and sweetly, and… well, and not Jack, not all the things Jack is, that Gil doesn’t need. Someone who could be good for him, and there’s a voice in the back of his head, a spark that flares up and says _no one could be good to him the way I could be, if he let me, if I let me, no one could do it better_ , but being good _to_ someone isn’t being good _for_ someone, and there are too many reasons he can’t be that. Not just things in him, to be fair to himself, he isn’t a rotten person on the whole and he’d have his good points, but… 

But they live in the world, they live in society, and there’s so much Jack couldn’t protect him from, if he even… if there was even any chance of Gil wanting it. Which seems unlikely. 

Eventually, he falls asleep, with Gil snoring softly, pillowed against his chest.


	2. Morning Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (okay I was wrong this is going to be three chapters)
> 
> Jack and Gil wake up in the morning, and things are a little better.
> 
> Okay, a lot better.

He wakes up-- somehow, before noon, and not feeling entirely like death warmed over-- with Gil still wrapped around him, still resting against him. There’s a sliver of light that comes through the curtains, and barely illuminates him.

“Was it real?” Gil asks, one hand fisted in Jack’s bathrobe, words muffled against his chest. “Or did I dream all that?”

“No, it’s real. Well, I don’t-- I don’t know what you might have dreamed, but the, uh, Frankenstein thing… ‘real’ might not be the word, but a lot did happen, last night.”

Gil lifts his head, shifts a little and looks down at Jack with the smallest, softest smile. “We didn’t do anything I don’t remember?”

“I don’t think so. We ducked out of the wine festival too early for that.” He chuckles, his hands resting at Gil’s hips. “You remember we got our rooms swapped. We talked a while until you fell asleep.”

“Okay.” And his smile’s a little less small, no less soft. “And you love me.”

“Yes.” Jack says, because to lie about it now seems worse than pointless. But it aches to admit it in the daytime. It hurts in a way it didn’t hurt before. “Loving you is the best and worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“I’m not that bad.” Gil huffs, and rolls off of him, though not away. The length of his body is still pressed close and cozy. 

“No. No, you’re-- you’re not. You’re… wonderful, really. You drive me crazy, but I wouldn’t change you… I’m just… I’m just sorry I don’t-- That it’s not the way you deserve, from me. You trust me so much, you spent all of last night in my arms, and you deserve a better class of friend than I’ve been.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I want to kiss you.” 

It’s not exactly what he’d planned on saying, but maybe it’s best to let the full truth of it come out. Rip the band-aid off.

“Okay.” 

Jack winces. It’s that ‘okay’, and not rejection, that a part of him had been afraid of. That Gil would agree to whatever he wanted, because he’s his friend and he loves him, without question and without reservation, and he would give up pieces of himself with no hesitating, if Jack asked it.

“No, Gil, it’s not okay. You can’t-- no. You can’t say it’s ‘okay’, it isn’t.”

“Isn’t it?” Gil frowns, his hand slips into Jack’s.

“You don’t want me to. I’d be-- I’d be taking advantage of you, I’d be just as bad-- I’d be so much _worse_ than your lady Dracula, I’d be-- See, this is what I was afraid of, that I’d wind up-- That you’d say ‘okay’ because you always do, and I’d wind up hurting you.”

“... Jack, why do you think I don’t want you to?” He releases Jack’s hand so that he can push himself to sit up, the bed dips and shifts as he folds his legs beneath himself. His face is in shadows, the thin line of light falls across his lap. Jack can hear the seriousness in his expression well enough to picture it exactly in his mind anyway. 

“Why would I think you did?”

“I don’t know, because I’ve been in love with you? I mean I wasn’t, I wasn’t trying to make a big deal out of it, but I-- You know, I wouldn’t let it get in the way of a friendship just because you didn’t feel that way and I did-- but I didn’t keep it a secret, either, I didn’t think.”

“Gil-- Wait, hang on, I… I should, uh, I’d like…” He sits up as well, reaching for the curtain-- waiting a moment with his hand on it, until Gil gives him the nod, and they both adjust to the light coming in. Not much light, the lamps are off and the room’s curtains are shut as well, but there’s a soft grey light just the same from the gap in them. It’s enough to see Gil’s face by, and Jack reaches up to cup his cheeks. “I wouldn’t be taking advantage of you, if I kissed you right now?”

“You would not be. And I don’t know where you got the idea I _always_ say ‘okay’ when you ask for something.”

“ _Gil_.”

“I mean maybe I go along with you if I don’t have a better idea, but if I think you’re wrong, don’t I tell you as much?”

“Yeah, but not about real, about important stuff. You argue with me about… _work_. And still, you know, you-- I mean, you let me dress you up as a mental patient!”

“It worked.” Gil shrugs. “I really, really do want you to kiss me.”

“Okay.” Jack leans in. Gil does as well.

He’s spent the whole night with Gil in his arms and yet he could swear he’s been starving for him until this moment, he feels as if he’s never been touched in his life before Gil’s lips part against his own. And Gil, _Gil_ , Gil swoons in his arms, sighing against him, yielding to another kiss, another. Gil kisses the way he does everything else-- which is to say, he’s earnest and he’s sweet and he seems happy just hanging onto Jack and letting him take the lead, but that’s not to say he doesn’t take any initiative of his own. 

He climbs into Jack’s lap, which… how’s that for initiative? Jack’s a fan, if this is going to be how things are. Climbs into his lap and wraps his arms around him and melts. The urge to tumble him back down onto the bed is present, and to let things happen as they may from there, but they should be checking out… they have a bus to catch, and if they miss that, then they miss their train and their flight as well.

“Gil…” He groans, pulling away.

“No teeth.” Gil pants, head lolling back, throat right there for the taking, and Jack suddenly, perversely, finds he would like to bite him. 

He won’t, because Gil doesn’t want to be, just wants to be kissed and he’s never going to tire of kissing him, but just for a moment he wants to.

“Okay.” He nuzzles at him, undoes a button to expose a little more collarbone. “How about just this?”

The mark he sucks to the surface won’t last long, it’s too brief and gentle for a real hickey, it’s just that Gil’s so _fair_ that it shows up so clearly now. 

“Oh…” Gil nods, fingers playing over the spot. “Y-yeah. Yeah, that’s-- just, no teeth.”

“No teeth.” He promises. “Unless you tell me you changed your mind, never teeth. We should, uh, we should pack.”

“We’re mostly packed from last night.” He tilts his head back again. 

Jack returns to his throat with a groan. What he wants, more than anything, is to topple them over, to have Gil on his back, to absolutely cover him in kisses… and if he starts that, they’re definitely not getting to the bus on time. 

“If I keep kissing you… we’re going to need to change our entire travel itinerary… and then your father is going to fire me…”

“My father doesn’t need to know you’re kissing me.”

“No-- no, I know that, he’s… he’s definitely not going to know I’m kissing you, he, uh… he does not need to know that, no. I meant for missing our bus. Train. Plane.”

“Oh. Right. Jack?”

“Yeah, honey?”

Gil _beams_ at him. For a moment Jack worries he’s lost his train of thought completely in favor of just… just looking at him like that. 

“Maybe, when we get back…” He toys with the lapel of Jack’s robe. “I was thinking, you could just come back to my place?”

“We’re not having sex on the plane ride back.” Jack answers, because even though Gil has not mentioned it, it seems like the kind of thing that should be a rule, and if he makes it a rule now, he can’t suggest it later. 

“That’s why we need to go to my place, yeah. I mean, or your place. I have curtains, though--”

“Gil.” He places a finger against Gil’s lips to stop him, and is utterly unprepared for having that finger kissed. “Don’t buy me curtains, I don’t need curtains, we will go to your place, we-- uh, we…”

“Okay, Jack.” Another kiss. “You don’t need curtains. I’ve got curtains. You could, you know, you could… I mean, would it make sense, if we just…”

Gil doesn’t say it, Gil doesn’t need to say it. Jack knows exactly where this question is going, and he should stop him now and table the whole thing, but that is not what he does.

“Moved in together?”

“I mean, is that crazy?”

It is, because he’s only just kissed Gil this morning, he’s only just admitted to being gay this morning-- and even then, only in regards to how much he wants to kiss Gil-- and he’s not thinking straight by any definition.

It’s not, because he’s known Gil long enough and spent enough time on his couch, not just working at his place but watching TV and eating meals and… And because he could spend every night with Gil, taking turns being the big spoon, waking up to find Gil wrapped around him every morning, he could reach out any time and feel the warmth of his body, run his fingers through silk-soft hair, could haul Gil into his lap like he is now, feel centered by the weight of him, feel the rightness of having his arms wrapped around him tight… 

“No, I should move in.” He wraps both arms around Gil’s waist, tilts in to kiss him. “I should move in with you. I should… make breakfast for you every morning. I should make love to you every night. I should just live with you, why don’t I already live with you?”

“I don’t know.” Gil laughs, and squeezes him tight, and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him. “Live with me.”

“I will. Yeah.”

“Jack…”

“We need to pack or we are never leaving this bed. What is it?”

“Do you mean that, about every night?”

Jack closes his eyes, leaning his head against Gil’s with a groan. “Again, we need to get out of bed, pack our things, and catch our bus, so that I do not get fired… for blowing off my job… so that I can--”

“Yes?”

And Gil is so close and so _breathless_ and naif though he may be, Jack is pretty sure he doesn’t need to finish that sentence.

“You need to get off my lap.”

“You need to let go of me first.”

Jack groans, and Gil laughs and kisses him-- soft, this time, chaste. 

“I wish we had time to use that enormous bathtub.”

“There’ll be other bathtubs.” Gil reassures him, with another little kiss. 

“Not like that one, did you, did you see it? _Huge_. I’ve never seen a bathtub that could fit us both before.”

“I’ll figure something out.” And he finally extracts himself from Jack’s lap, and drags Jack out of bed with him. “Do we have time for a shower?”

“We don’t have time for two showers.” Jack licks his lips, checks the time. “We could… share one. Quick one.”

“Probably. I mean, I’ve never--” Gil coughs and studies the curtains very intently. “I’ve never showered with someone. I mean, you know, in a private, intimate… setting. I got an exemption from gym senior year of high school, which marks the last time I showered with other people. Non-intimately.”

“It’s okay.” Jack steers him towards the door. “I’ve never actually showered with someone, either. Intimately. Um, look, it-- it’s _intimate_ , but that doesn’t mean it has to-- I mean, if you’re nervous, you know… No pressure. We can, uh… we can get to know each other, in, in phases? Get used to… things.”

“Get used to things?”

“Being naked together.” He clarifies, though he’s not sure it needed clarifying. It’s not like they’ve ever had a whole lot of modesty around each other, but full nudity is going to be a new aspect of their relationship. As much as he wants to pin Gil to the nearest available surface and put his hands and his mouth absolutely everywhere, he’d be content taking things slow, easing into it. After Gil’s whole… experience, maybe slow is better. “Plus, I didn’t-- I don’t have, uh, condoms. So if that’s a-- you know, a comfort issue, for you…”

“Oh.” Gil’s face goes blank at that. “I didn’t… I didn’t consider-- I mean… I can’t get pregnant. And if I could, obviously, contraception’s, you know… It’s not something I thought about. Do… do we need that?”

“Well… no, I-- I haven’t really… I know I’m, um, clean.” He swallows. “But if you were anxious about it, I’d have, you know. I’d have gotten a test, so you could see the results.”

“I trust you. You wouldn’t lie to me about that.” He gives Jack a small smile, a kiss to the cheek, before he starts fumbling with his buttons. “I guess I-- Well, and I am! Clean. I mean, I’m… you know. In my thirties…”

“Yes?”

“And I’ve never, I mean. That’s all.” He’s looking away again, and his hands tremble a little, and so Jack steps forward and takes them, kisses each before working on undoing Gil’s buttons himself. “I’ve never had sex.”

“That’s okay.”

“And I sort of imagined that if I-- that _when_ I did, it would-- I’d be, um… We’d have the lights off and be under the covers. Don’t look at me like that.”

“You’re so fucking Catholic.”

“Well I didn’t ask to be.” He folds his arms, then unfolds them so that Jack can continue to undress him. “I’m sorry I don’t have a wild imagination.”

“Don’t be.” Jack smiles. “We don’t have to have sex in the shower. It’s probably safer if we don’t… you should have your first time somewhere comfortable. We’re just going to be naked, and… wet… and-- okay, we’re, no. We’re going to be in control of ourselves. We’re going to look at each other and… get used to everything. And then when we have sex, in your bed--”

“Our bed?”

“Our bed.” His smile doubles. “When we have sex, in our bed, you won’t be nervous. Yeah?”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever not been nervous.”

“You won’t be nervous. I’m going to be very careful to make sure you’re not nervous about being with me. I’m going to take care of you.”

Gil nods. “Okay, Jack. Okay.”

Jack hangs his robe up, gets the water heating up, before he sheds his underwear, and watches Gil step out of his pajama bottoms, watches him shrug out of his unbuttoned top and shimmy out of his boxers. He’s beautiful, and it’s not as if Jack didn’t know that, but it’s different to be able to _look_ at him, at all of him. To see the full spread of the blush overtaking him and the hunch of his shoulders and the way he holds his hands in front of himself a moment before he laughs at himself and lets them drop. 

“This is me.” He shrugs, and Jack _aches_ for him, he can feel it in his _teeth_ , it’s buzzing under his skin, the desire just to _touch_.

He’s beautiful, the graceful, lean lines of his body, the fact that he’s just a little hard, just enough to be a point of interest in Jack’s perusal. He’s uncut, and the sheer novelty makes the idea of touching him all the more compelling.

“This is me.” Jack smiles, and spreads his arms and gives a turn. Notices, when he finishes, that Gil is looking at him with open hunger. It hits him hard, that look, it’s something he never expected to see on him. Even when they’d been in bed, kissing each other like their lives depended on it, when Gil was clinging to him and moaning, somehow Jack never imagined being looked at with this kind of _heat_.

He’d imagined Gil as sort of sexless, mistaken his polite reserve as casual disinterest-- more than casual disinterest, where women were concerned, but has it always just been Gil trying to do the same thing Jack’s done, and not let his feelings become an issue in their friendship? He never went to the lengths Jack did to keep his sexuality hidden, but he’s always been _quiet_ about it, and… and just sort of… squeaky-clean. _Innocent_.

Jack is used to being told, implicitly, by society as a whole, that the kind of man he is and the kind of sex he wants is incompatible with the very notion of innocence. Not sex as a whole-- he views sex as a net positive in terms of what it’s done for the world, it’s natural and it’s fun and it brings people together. He’s just so used to thinking of himself as dirty, and for what? For no good reason?

Because if Gil could want him, with the same fierce desire he feels for Gil, then something he’s been made to believe is wrong, and he’s not wrong about Gil. He’s not wrong about Gil being sweet and kind and soft, he’s not wrong about Gil managing to retain a real, serious _innocence_ despite being in the family business of bullshit artistry. 

There might be things Gil wants that could go under the header of ‘harmful’-- for all his anxiety, if he’s excited about something he can focus in on what he wants and forget about consequences, and this trip has been proof of that… but this? No, not this. He can’t hurt him, not by loving him-- not if he lets himself.

“Jack? Water’s hot.”

“Mm, must have gotten distracted.” He puts on a smile, moves to join Gil in the shower.

“What’s on your mind?”

He could shrug it all off, make it into simple want. He’s tempted to, but… he can talk to Gil, and he thinks maybe he owes it to him, not to hide behind things now.

“Just thinking… I’ve been messed up about wanting to be with another man since the first time I realized I wanted that. It’s nothing my parents tried to teach me, it’s nothing religious, it’s just… once, another kid said it was the worst thing you could be, and no one stepped in and said otherwise. And ever since then… it’s been a lot of no one saying otherwise.” He rests his hands on Gil’s hips, and rests his chin on Gil’s shoulder. The water streaming down his back is hot, and Gil is warm at his front, and the shower, like the curtained bed, is a place of complete privacy, a world for the two of the alone. He can relax here. He can open up.

“Kids are cruel.” Gil says. It means something, Jack thinks, that he says ‘are’, not ‘can be’.

“How did you accept it, about yourself? I mean, you should have had it worse than me.”

“I don’t know. I guess I knew I couldn’t be any other way than how I was… am. And… Look, so if it doesn’t matter what you do and being gay is enough to damn you, then nothing I can do matters. And if it doesn’t matter what you do because we’re saved by grace alone and the catholic church is just wrong about that, then… it also doesn’t matter. And if it doesn’t matter that you are gay so long as you don’t do anything, I thought, well maybe I won’t… wind up doing anything. And then you happened.” Gil’s head comes to rest on Jack’s shoulder in return, his arms fold around him. “And I thought… I could be damned for him. I wouldn’t regret that. And then one day… I thought I wouldn’t be.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I thought… anyone who wants to tell me loving you is wrong, they don’t know what they’re talking about. I mean, look at you. And look at us. And, I mean, look at _me_ , for that matter. Loving you is the _least_ shameful thing about me.”

“I don’t know about that. But thanks.”

They lean into each other a moment. Jack runs his hands up and down Gil’s back, focuses on the feel of him. Wants to imprint Gil on his skin, so that he can close his eyes and call him to mind any time he’s without him. Hell, he wants to never be without him.

“I thought I’d be more embarrassed. Not about-- I mean, the-- Getting naked.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, it’s… well, I guess being naked in the shower is normal, I just, you’re normally not here, and sometimes when I’m here I’m thinking… about you…”

Jack grins. “Tell me about that later. Can I wash your-- uh… can I wash you?”

“What, all of me?”

“Can I?”

Gil flashes him a shy smile, and nods, and Jack lathers up a washcloth, shifts them so that Gil has more of the water coming down over his shoulders. Rivulets down his chest… It’s a nice chest-- lean as he is, he’s not _scrawny_ , his muscle is well-toned. He tilts his head back with a sigh as Jack begins working the thick foam of suds across his chest, as the circles he works with the washcloth start down his front. It’s funny, how doing this for him changes things-- changes the nature of his wanting. He’s no longer thinking about what he doesn’t have time for, what he wants to do right later, what he can’t do here and now, he has so much of Gil he can touch, and it satisfies something in him. It satisfies him to take care of him.

He thinks about how Gil had been, last night, shaky in his arms and suddenly feeling everything all over again, how he’d been at a loss, the need to do anything to make him feel safe but no idea how he could… He’s still not sure what all the right moves are, but he can do this, he can make sure Gil knows he’s cared for. He can show him how ready he is to take care of him. 

“You’re beautiful, do you know that?” He asks, studies Gil’s blush up close, the self-conscious curve of his smile. 

“Oh gosh…”

“Really. I-- I always thought… Do you remember when we met?”

“Yes.” Gil nods, covers one of Jack’s hands with his own.

“I took one look at you and panicked, just a little.”

“Did you, really? I-- I don’t think I was so much to panic over…”

“Maybe not, but before I met you I was doing pretty good at pretending to be straight. But you, I knew you were trouble.”

“No one’s ever called _me_ trouble before, _you’re_ trouble.” He laughs. “You’re… look at you.”

“I knew you were trouble.” Jack repeats. “I wanted to run my fingers through your hair. I wanted to whisper in your ear and make you blush. I wanted to kiss you… I’d wanted to kiss boys before, but it was… I could always shrug it off. Pretend it didn’t mean much. If I had a crush on a, on a singer or something, you know, that didn’t count. But then you and I were working together and I couldn’t keep my hands off of you, I’d find myself just… grabbing onto you, without even thinking about it, like I couldn’t--”

It had scared him, which isn’t what he wants to say now, and he definitely doesn’t want to say ‘couldn’t help it’ after… well, everything-- he’d always worried about crossing some line without even noticing himself do it, he’d worried about doing something to destroy their friendship, which had quickly become vital to him. He’d worried about taking something that wasn’t his to take. He hadn’t dreamed it could be his for the asking… And yet here he is, watching the soap rinse away from Gil’s skin, his hands on him. Not hurting Gil at all, but making him better. He might not be able to know how much security he’s able to impart, but there’s no more doubting that what he’s offering, Gil’s getting something out of. 

“You couldn’t?” Gil prompts, swaying closer, clinging to Jack’s arms now.

“Like I couldn’t keep away from you if I tried.” He settles on what he hopes are the right words. Better words. “I never could try very hard, either.”

“Oh, Jack…”

“I just… uh, you were something _right_. I’ve never been good at handling something right.”

“Jack, kiss me.”

He does, he’s not about to not. It’s something Gil sounds so sure of, and he fits so nicely in Jack’s arms, and his mouth is right _there_ , like he was made for him, made to be kissed, and the way he kisses back, like he’s starving for it, the soft sound of complaint when Jack slows down the pace and the way that he quickly melts all over again… No, nothing’s ever felt this right. 

Jack has always been the kind of person who wanted to fix what was wrong, no wonder he couldn’t handle being handed something so right. No wonder he couldn’t imagine being granted one beautiful thing that needed no fixing. Oh, he could fix things _for_ Gil, he’s riding high on the very idea, but Gil himself, Gil is perfect.

Jack sees no reason to stop kissing him, now that he’s started. He can reach around Gil to scrub his back without stopping, and Gil seems content to let him. 

“Jack…” Gil murmurs against his lips, nuzzles at his cheek a little before pulling away at last. “You’re not getting very clean.”

“Is that a hint?” He grins and hands the second washcloth over. “Would you like a blatant excuse to touch me back?”

“Yes, please.”

He laughs. “Okay, well, uh, help yourself.”

Gil does, and it’s nice-- could easily get sexy if he let it, because it’s Gil’s hands, and they’re wet, and they’re naked, and Gil keeps sneaking touches to his bare skin, no washcloth in the way, bites his lip and grins to himself as he touches Jack’s chest, his shoulder, his stomach. 

“So, uh… wow. So this is you, so… I can’t help thinking I’m coming out of this deal, you know, way better, you are… wow. I mean, I knew you were-- But I didn’t know about--”

“Thank you?”

“This is thanks enough.” Gil says very seriously, both hands feeling up Jack’s chest. “I should be thanking you, really. I _will_ be thanking you, for _that_. When we, you know, when I get to, um… touch, more.” His gaze strays down. 

“I’m pretty sure you don’t thank me when you touch my dick, I’m pretty sure I thank you for that and you thank me for touching you. Or maybe neither of us? Thanks the other? I’m not sure, maybe we don’t because it’s, uh, weird? Maybe we just, you know, have an understanding that this is mutually pleasurable ground, and, uh, no thanks required.”

“Whatever the etiquette is, I feel like a very lucky man. I’m glad we’re doing this. I mean, the-- showering, waiting, the, uh… getting used to each other? Because-- I mean, it’s great!-- I just… when I imagined, what I would do, if you…? I don’t think I was imagining… _enough_ , of you.”

“Oh. You imagined…?”

Gil shrugs, embarrassed. “Once in a while. Can’t always help it.”

“Well, uh… when we get home, why don’t you tell me what you always imagined, and I’ll tell you what I’ve been thinking, and we’ll see what kind of common ground we find.”

“Sure.” And he gives Jack another shy smile, another lingering look, another not-so-tentative touch. 

It’s probably as well that the water starts going cold on them when it does. They were supposed to be saving time, not making it... 

Jack towels Gil off, though, careful and attentive. Saving time is all well and good, but what’s he supposed to do, a rush job? He thinks maybe it would be weird to ask if he can dress him, beyond helping him into his jacket, that kind of small thing. But… it’s a harmless weird. Something he might work up the nerve to ask for in the future, the next time the urge to do anything in the world just to take care of the man hits, as he’s sure it will. Gil is the kind of man you want to take care of…

There’s going to be time for that. There’s going to be time to cook for two, button Gil into his shirts in the mornings and unbutton him out of them at night. There’s going to be time to hold him, just hold him, if there are ever nightmares about things that happened here. For either of them-- Jack’s sure he’s not free and clear, either, that he’ll have dreams where Gil is strapped to that table again, maybe dreams where he can’t get to him, or finds him hurt when he does. 

For now, he settles on straightening Gil’s clothes after letting him dress himself, fixing his hair just to fuss over him. 

“Ready to head for home?”

Gil smiles, touches Jack’s wrist before they each move to grab their luggage and leave the room. 

“Home sounds good.”


	3. Let Me Come Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack and Gil are ready to U-haul it and also the sex happens.

When they do reach Gil’s place at last, they’re both travel-worn, they fall into bed half-dressed with teeth haphazardly brushed and sleep like the dead. 

When Jack wakes, Gil is still sleeping, is cuddled into his chest, one leg hitched around him and snoring softly. The light that filters in through his curtains is soft, rosy. That might have less to do with the quality of the morning and more to do with the fact that the curtains in his bedroom are pink. The pattern isn’t so different from the ones Jack had seen, but it’s a muted palette-- soft grey triangles and zig-zags on pastel pink. 

He takes in the bedroom for the first time-- actually decorated, with actual furniture. He’d been too sacked out to take notice of anything, beyond the fact that Gil had a bed, and that the bed proved to be comfortable. The bed, dresser, and nightstands are a matched set, basic but sturdy… the bedspread is a grey and white grid, the sheets pink satin, so that the bedding sort of matches the curtains. There are lamps on the nightstands and even those match, white fabric shades and pale pink ceramic bases, and everything feels…

It feels intentional. It feels homey. It feels like a place you would want to go home to, not just the place you go when you’re out of places you’d rather be. Jack’s apartment is a used couch, a mattress on the floor, cheap bookcases, a TV, and he routinely eats dinner in front of the news, which feels like some kind of metaphor for his life and his relationship to material comfort. He’s focused on big things that he can’t do anything about. He could do something about how he lives, but he never does… his own comfort just never seems to _matter_ , when there’s so much happening in the world, when he wants to be doing more than he is. But there’s really no reason not to be comfortable. He doesn’t feel as if he deserves to be uncomfortable, or that by being uncomfortable there’s some payoff anywhere else, he just… he doesn’t bother. He doesn’t spend a lot of time home, he doesn’t spend his money on things that make his apartment nicer.

Gil has a photo of them on his nightstand. 

That’s the thing that hits him, really hits him. It’s maybe from a party, a casual snapshot of the two of them, they’d been talking to each other before having their attention drawn to the camera, and Jack’s arm is around Gil’s shoulders, not loose and casual but like he wants to draw him close. Gil has a drink in one hand and a plate in the other-- Jack remembers now, remembers that party, because Gil had filled up a plate, just things from the crudite tray, some little hard pretzel sticks, a couple of cubes of cheese, and then with a drink in his other hand and no table near where they wound up, he hadn’t been able to eat any of it, and so Jack had…

Well, Jack had stolen one of his cheese cubes and a couple of pretzels, but he’d also fed him pretzels and baby carrots, and when he’d gotten a bunch of grapes for himself, tossed a couple into Gil’s mouth. Thought nothing of it at the time, though it must have looked shockingly intimate, mustn’t it have? But he hadn’t even thought about it then, it just felt natural. 

Gil has the photo framed, and it’s just a simple frame, really, but it is a frame, and it’s the two of them, and it’s turned towards the spot Gil sleeps every night, it’s one of the last things he sees as he turns off the light each night.

He feels as if he’s accidentally discovered a home has been waiting for him, no saying how long, and all he had to do was decide to stay.

He strokes Gil’s hair and lets his eyes close a while longer, focuses on the feel of Gil’s breathing as he slowly wakes. 

“Hey, morning.” He greets, when he thinks Gil’s awake enough. 

“Morning.” Gil nuzzles his way up into the crook of Jack’s neck, his voice rough with sleep. And that’s not new, because they’ve woken up together before, but it’s different now, it thrills him.

Or he’s different, and he lets it.

“I love you.”

The words still sit unfamiliar on his tongue, he still feels a little spike of fear saying them, but it’s a fear that’s eased by having Gil in his arms, warm and heavy and eager to press closer yet.

“Love you, too. Mm, ‘s nice…”

“What’s nice?”

“This. You. Mornings with you.”

“Would you come out of there and let me kiss you?”

Gil unburies his face from Jack’s neck, regarding him with a warm smile, and Jack leans up to kiss him. Has to fight a grin when Gil melts immediately, the little sigh against his lips and his body suddenly loose and pliant.

Jack rolls him over, rolls onto him, and takes just a moment to enjoy the way Gil looks up at him. A little bit lovestruck and a little bit deer-in-the-headlights, the slow, delighted smile that spreads across his face, his hands moving tentatively to Jack’s waist, his shoulder. 

“Oh… So-- are we…?”

“If you want.” He lowers himself down, kisses Gil softly. He keeps him pressed down to the bed, but he takes the kissing slow. He likes this, this sort of penning Gil in, but he doesn’t want him to feel trapped, is too aware of how recently Gil had been tied down, helpless, scared. He _wants_ him to feel safe. Taken care of. _Protected_ , even if that’s silly here and now. He wants to be between Gil and the world.

“Yes.” Gil moans, and holds on tight to him, and it feels so like it had, rolling around on the ground, only this time there’s a freedom. There’s no pretending he wants less than all of him, there’s no posturing, there’s no excuses. 

“Gil…” Jack looks at him a moment, drinks in the sight of him. “Gil, I feel like-- oh, look at you…”

“Uh-huh?”

“Nothing. I just-- I feel like I’ve been tired for so long. And I make myself tired, because I’m always running away from me. And I’m done running. And I just want to come home to you.”

“Okay. You’re home.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“Shouldn’t it be?”

“Yeah.” He nods, and presses his cheek to Gil’s, and soaks up the feeling of Gil pressing close everywhere they touch. “It should…”

He doesn’t know if it will be, just because he’s turned a corner with himself, just because he’s ready to let it. There’s still a big, bad world out there that hates who he is… but he can see himself relaxing, here. Doing his part to make it home and make it nice-- Gil’s already furnished the place, for the most part, but there’s plenty of room in the kitchen for Jack’s stuff, and he actually cooks, and he could make that area his own and he could… he could make Gil feel taken care of, and maybe…

Maybe he’s ready to give himself a break and let himself be happy _as_ himself, with the right person, instead of chasing after a phony life to fit a phony Jack Harrison, and always finding himself dissatisfied. His life’s not perfect, but isn’t that all the more reason to grab onto the one perfect thing he can have with both hands?

“You’re overdressed.” He toys with the button of Gil’s fly. They both are, really. Fell into bed having removed belts and shoes and outer layers. 

“Fix that for me.” Gil doesn’t quite make it a demand, and doesn’t quite make it a plea, and doesn’t quite pull off making it a come-on, and Jack cannot imagine loving someone more.

He sits up, straddling Gil’s thighs, and starts by peeling him out of his undershirt, gives himself some time to admire the view. It’s an attractive angle, made moreso by the way his hair is ruffled, how he blinks up at Jack a moment before reaching for the hem of his tee shirt, eyes begging the question. They shift, so that he can sit up long enough to get Jack undressed to the waist, and then he flops back into the pillows with a grin, and Jack follows him down to kiss him. To kiss him and to kiss him and to kiss him… why didn’t he kiss him years ago? He should have kissed him the day he met him.

“Please…” Gil murmurs the word against his lips, hands on him, and how could he refuse?

He’s refused himself so long, he can’t refuse Gil on top of that, not now that he knows, not now that he understands. 

“Tell me about what you want.” He sits back again, to continue undressing them both. “What you dream about. Your first time, you must have thought about how you wanted it to go…”

“I wanted it to be with you.” Gil shrugs, one hand coming up to rest on Jack’s chest a moment, before he lifts his hips and helps with getting his slacks wriggled out of. “I-- I don’t… I’ve never, um… There’s really only so much a guy can practice on his own.”

“Okay. So… what _do_ you do? When you, uh, think about me?” Jack works on shedding his own pants. It’s not exactly graceful, but Gil doesn’t seem to mind. He’s too busy blushing over the question.

“Well… if I’m showering at night, um, that’s usually when I…” He gestures illustratively. “I don’t think I do anything very special. Things are wet, things are soapy, I wish I was with you, everything’s easy to clean up, I go to bed and it’s a race between sleep and guilt.”

“Right, but… what do you wish I was doing?”

“I think about…” Gil hesitates, swallows. His eyes dart down, then away. 

Jack takes a little pity on him, settling back down over him and kissing his cheek warmly. “Hey. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Look, what if I tell you first?”

Gil nods.

“Okay. Okay… well. On the train, when we had that private car, and you fell asleep on my shoulder?”

“Uh-huh?”

“I might have spent the whole trip thinking… all the opportunities we’ve missed out on. All the ones I hope we’ll get. I thought about that huge bathtub, I wish we’d gotten to use that bathtub. I would have drawn us a nice, hot bath… just to soak in, just to _relax_. Had you sit between my legs so I could massage your shoulders, then you’d just… lean back, and I’d hold you. I’d hold you… run, uh, run my hands all over you. Touch your chest, your thighs…”

“Oh.” Gil licks his lips. “Then what?”

“After I had you nice and relaxed, and nice and interested… then I figure we’d, ah, we’d go back to bed, and I’d… oh, I don’t know. Dry you off. Kiss you all over. And I mean all over, Gil, I mean I want to get my mouth on every inch of you…”

“ _Every_ inch?”

“Some inches more than others. But… I mean, is that… not what you want?”

“Well…” He screws up his face, as Jack watches him carefully for every nuance of his reaction. “Some inches more than others? I mean, there’s-- there are places you don’t plan on…”

“I plan on.”

“Jack, please don’t put your mouth near my feet.”

Much as with the notion of biting, being told no puts the thought in his head. He hadn’t actually considered it, when he said ‘all over’, he didn’t actually imagine getting any lower than the knee, and he only imagined going there so that he could work his way back up Gil’s thighs. Now, he kind of wants to, at least in the imaginary scenario in which they’ve just enjoyed a pre-soak shower and a lengthy purely-for-relaxation bath. Not, he thinks, in a weird way. Not in a slobbery, sexual way-- probably. It’s kind of hard to say, with Gil, because all the things he’s never been interested in doing with people he’s had the opportunity to do things with, he wants to do with Gil. At least, those things which are anatomically possible. Plus all the things he’s never been in a position to try, but which he vaguely knows to be anatomically possible.

“I stop at the ankle, deal. Anyplace else?”

“I-- I can’t think of any place else you’d put your mouth that I wouldn’t want you to.”

“Well. Then I will put my mouth… all those other places you’ll like. I do wish we’d had time for that bathtub…”

“I know where we can fit into a bathtub.”

“Honey, I can’t afford any place with a bathtub that big, so unless this bathtub is haunted by alien sex fiends, we’re going to have to stick to scrubbing each other’s backs in the shower.”

“It’s going to be a tight fit in my shower, too. Don’t worry about the bathtub, I’ll-- you know, I’ll figure it out for a special occasion, it’s-- So you… you’d be kissing me all over?”

“Mm-hm. No biting, just kissing… maybe a little licking? Some sucking…”

“Oh… o-okay.” Gil nods. “And what do I do?”

“You lie there… and enjoy it… until I’m done.”

Gil squirms beneath him, he can feel him half-hard already and can’t stop himself from grinding back down against him. Just a little… just a little to hear the sound he makes.

“What about you, honey? Hm?” Jack grins down at him, rolls his hips again. “What do you think about?”

“In the shower?”

“Or any other time.”

“Think about you.” Gil admits in a mumble, averting his eyes for half a moment. “I… Sometimes, when I’m, you know, touching myself?”

“Uh-huh?” He’d like to ask him for details, maybe a demonstration, but to ask for a demonstration, he’d have to stop pressing the entire length of his body against him, and he’s pretty sure if he pushes Gil to give more detail than he’s prepared to give, he’ll go bright red and stammer to a halt.

“Well, I take my other hand?”

“Yeah?” Jack licks his lips, a host of images filling his head. Gil, cupping and rolling his balls? Gil, tweaking a nipple? Gil, reaching around behind himself, tentative but curious?

“I, um… I mean, not every time, because sometimes I’m not thinking about anything much, but I-- and it’s not really, uh, much…”

“Gil.” Jack kisses the end of his nose. “It doesn’t have to be much. I just want to know.”

“I stick my fingers in my mouth.” He blurts the words out, nodding. 

“... Come again?”

“Only once. _Oh_ , you meant-- No, um… I just, I stick a couple of fingers in my mouth? Just to have something to… something there?”

“While you’re…?”

He nods again. 

“That’s…” Jack swallows. Hot? Is it weird if he says that’s hot? ‘Good’ sounds weirder still, he’s not sure how he can finish the thought. 

“It’s weird, isn’t it?”

He shakes his head, slides two of his own fingers past Gil’s lips. Sucks in a breath as Gil immediately draws them further in, as his tongue caresses Jack’s fingertips, slick-wet and hot, and the very _idea_ of being able to feel this somewhere other than his fingers is short circuiting his thought processes more than a little bit.

“Not weird.”

“Mm?”

“No, really. Uh, good, actually. _Really_ good.”

“Mm.”

He slides his fingers free, with some reluctance, so that he can kiss Gil again, so that he can replace them with his own tongue, which he’s never really liked before, never liked when kissing got wet and too-intimate… that had always been the point at which kissing a girl started to feel wrong, if tongues got particularly into things. With Gil, it’s perfect. With Gil, he just wants more. 

“I love you.” Jack kisses his way along Gil’s jaw, reminds himself he’d promised no teeth when he reaches his ear and has the urge to _tug_. Not that there’s a lot to tug _at_ , exactly, the shape of Gil’s ear isn’t really conducive to biting, he has to settle for tracing the tip of his tongue along the edge, until Gil squirms and pushes at him.

“Wait-- okay, love you too, very much, but--”

“Sensitive?”

“Please do not put your tongue inside my ear.” Gil says it with the most hangdog look imaginable, and Jack can only laugh and kiss him again.

“Okay.”

“Just, maybe my mouth is the only orifice your tongue should be going into?”

“Then I take it analingus is out of the question?”

The look Gil gives him is _horrified_. 

“Have you _done_ that with people?”

“No.” He grins. “Just making sure we’re on the same page.”

“I’d rather have you lick the bottom of my foot than-- that.”

“Say the word and I _will_.”

“Jack, that’s _disgusting_.”

“I’m crazy about you. That’s all. Say the word and I’ll do _anything_.”

“Okay, well, not that!”

“Okay.” He kisses Gil again, soft, over his cheeks, the end of his nose, the mole on his chin, and finally his lips, his lips, his lips… “Nothing you don’t want. I promise, honey, I promise.”

“If it involves someone’s anus, I don’t want it. Or if it involves waxy buildup. Or-- you know. The gross parts.”

“Sure. For the record, I don’t think any part of you is gross.”

“I’ll tell you which parts of me are gross.”

“I do get to touch your dick, right? There are no germaphobic hangups that are going to get between my mouth and your dick?”

“No, I definitely want that. And vice-versa.” Gil nods, with enough enthusiasm to send his hair flopping across his forehead just so, and so Jack gently preens it back.

“Good.”

“Only-- I’ve never done it before, and I-- I’m a little worried I won’t be… good, at it.”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“You’re just… _big_.”

Jack doesn’t think there’s much difference, if any, between how big Gil is and how big he is, but hearing it still does something for him. 

“I think we’re about the same.” 

“Well, I’ve also never… you know, with my own, so…”

“Okay, hang on.” Jack grabs a pillow and sits up, gets it slid under Gil’s hips so that when he straddles him again and sinks down, it’s easier to line them up and get his hand around the both of them. “Forgive my very unscientific measuring technique.”

“ _Oh_ \-- oh, _Jack_ …”

He hasn’t really started yet, but the reaction is gratifying already. Gil keeps looking between Jack’s eyes, and what his hand is doing, as he begins to slowly stroke them together. There’s maybe a slight difference, no more dramatic than the difference in the rest of them. He has _maybe_ half an inch of height on Gil in sock feet, Gil’s got a narrower waist, Jack’s got broader shoulders, but even that… they could wear each other’s clothes no problem, and Jack’s held onto clothes from only a couple years back that would fit Gil better than they fit him, and his hands are a little bit bigger than Gil’s but it’s close, everything about the two of them is close. This is close, too.

The real difference is that Gil’s uncut, the loose skin drawing back to expose the head of his cock, shiny and pink and leaking just a little already, and Jack shifts to focus on Gil alone. Focuses on the feel of him, how well he fits Jack’s hand and how satisfying it is to watch him react as he’s touched… the little sounds he makes and the way his eyes roll back when Jack runs his thumb in teasing circles over the head. 

“You really are sensitive...”

“Can we-- like you were-- together?” Gil finally manages, and Jack can only stare at him a long moment, captivated by the spreading flush and the rise and fall of his chest, and the hazy disarray he’s in. “Can we do that again? Otherwise I’m going to finish without you...”

“Whatever you want.” He nods, and gathers them both into one grip again, focuses on the way it feels to have Gil pressed close, for each stroke of his hand to spread Gil’s leaking precome over the both of them. It’s a little awkward, but not so much that he can’t get the hang of it quick enough.

Gil grabs at his thighs, his hands warm and strong, and Jack’s free hand trails up Gil’s arm, kneads at his shoulder before moving to explore his chest. It hadn’t been like this, when he’d touched him in the shower, they’d moved away from that _charge_ , but now the lightest touch is electric. And Gil just reacts so _much_ , when his thumb passes over a nipple. 

“God, you’re beautiful…” Jack groans. “You fall right apart the second I touch you. You’re everything I could ever ask for.”

“Really?”

“You’re perfect.”

“Oh, Jack, I-- _Jack_ , I--”

“Shh, I’ve got you, honey…” His hand slides up to cup Gil’s face now, to feel the heat of his blush, the softness of his cheek under the sweep of a thumb, the invisible-blond morning stubble against the heel of his hand.

Gil looks up at him, breathless, pupils blown wide and lips parted and just… just delicious, just everything about him so gorgeous, teetering between needy and already overwhelmed. It’s the sweetest thing Jack’s ever seen in his life and even like this he feels too far away. 

He takes his hand off them, shifts to lie down over Gil, to just grind against him, and Gil wraps his arms around Jack when he does, kisses him hungrily once his lips are in reach. It was just supposed to be a little teasing before the main event, he’d had plans for getting his mouth on Gil-- and vice-versa-- but now that he’s here, he can’t stop. He hadn’t imagined just a little friction could be so good, but with Gil clinging to him and kissing him with every ounce of love he’s got, with everything in him… it’s the best thing he’s ever felt.

All right, and his sex life has been more limited than he’s let on, but still. Still, that this is all it takes, that this is suddenly all he wants… 

“Jack?”

“Gil…”

“Jack, could you…?”

“ _Anything_.”

Gil shudders, once, under him, and he tilts his head back. “Neck, lips, please.”

He doesn’t have to ask twice-- he doesn’t even have to ask once, coherently, Jack kisses a line up his throat from the dip in his clavicle to his chin, and then he makes his way down one side, until he’s low enough that he thinks if he left a mark, no one else would know. 

Not that people would know he was the one who left it, if they did see… but he thinks it’s best not to contemplate. They work for Gil’s father, after all, and if Gil were thinking clearly he might ask that Jack not leave a big visible hickey on him.

But he’s _not_ thinking clearly, and the high that gives Jack is incredible. He’s whining and moaning and bucking his hips up, and definitely leaving scratches down Jack’s back, and _Jack is doing this to him_ , and he just wants to spend the rest of his life making Gil crazy, making him wild with pleasure, making him beg and fall apart and come, oh, he wants to make him come…

He hadn’t dared dream, not much, and now suddenly the world is his, now suddenly Gil is unraveled in his arms, stiffens and lets out a rush of sounds that the neighboring apartment definitely hears, one leg spasming.

“Oh, Jack…” Gil gasps, gaze unfocused and floating towards the ceiling. “Oh wow.”

Jack is close, if not quite there yet, and the _awe_ in Gil’s voice does a lot to spur him on towards his own release. When Gil finally manages to meet his eyes, still hazy but capable of some focus, when he brings a trembling hand up to Jack’s cheek, when the love radiating from him is so palpable, it’s easy to follow him over that finish line.

He’s careful rolling off of Gil, misses being close to him as much as they both need a moment to breathe-- Gil in particular, he thinks, he’s so _sensitive_ , he needs to come down a little before he’s completely overwhelmed. 

After a moment, Gil hands him a few tissues, and smiles warmly at him, and Jack handles the immediate cleanup. They can get a real shower later… for now, Gil is sacked out in the wake of his first time. He rolls to cuddle up to Jack’s shoulder, and Jack tugs the sheet up over his naked back, cranes his neck to kiss his temple. 

Gil is pleasantly heavy against him, and warm, warm as the soft pink light that floods the cool grey of the bedroom, and Jack feels at home.


End file.
